Upgrading Photon OS 4.0 system to Photon OS 5.0

You can upgrade the existing Photon OS 4.0 systems to Photon OS 5.0, and take advantage of the functionality enhancements in Photon OS 5.0. For details, see What’s New in Photon OS 5.0.

The photon-upgrade package provides a seamless upgrade for Photon OS. To use the package, you need to perform the following steps:

1. Install the photon-upgrade package on the Photon OS 4.0 system.
2. Run the following script:

   /bin/photon-upgrade.sh
   

3. Follow the interactions with that script.

Please note that the script also supports a non-interactive invocation using the --assume-yes option. The --help option of the photon-upgrade.sh script provides online help.

The photon-upgrade.sh script updates packages to the latest available versions in Photon OS 5.0. Also, the upgrade retains your 4.0 customizations in your new Photon OS 5.0 system.

Note: If your 4.0 VM is a full install, then you will have a 5.0 VM that represents a full install (all packages and dependencies). Upgrading a minimal installation takes less time due to fewer packages.

For each Photon OS 4.0 VM that you want to upgrade, complete the following steps:

1. Back up all existing settings and data for the Photon 4.0 VM.

2. Stop any services (for example, docker) that are currently running in the VM.

3. Install photon-upgrade package

   # tdnf -y install photon-upgrade
   

4. Run the upgrade script

   # photon-upgrade.sh --upgrade-os
   

5. Answer y to reboot the VM. The upgrade script powers down the Photon OS 4.0 VM and powers it on as a Photon OS 5.0 VM.

After the upgrade, before you deploy into production, test all previous functionality to ensure that everything works as expected.